Electronic attack slows Internet Saturday, January 25, 2003 Posted: 8:47 AM EST (1347 GMT) WASHINGTON (AP) -- Traffic on the many parts of the Internet slowed dramatically for hours early Saturday, the apparent effects of a fast-spreading, virus-like infection that overwhelmed the world's digital pipelines and interfered with Web browsing and delivery of e-mail. . . . . . . The virus-like attack, which began about 12:30 a.m. EST, sought out vulnerable computers on the Internet to infect using a known flaw in popular database software from Microsoft Corp., called "SQL Server 2000." But the attacking software code was scanning for victim computers so randomly and so aggressively -- sending out thousands of probes each second -- that it overwhelmed many Internet data pipelines. "This is like Code Red all over again," said Marc Maiffret, an executive with eEye Digital Security, whose engineers were among the earliest to study samples of the attack software. "The sheer number of attacks is eating up so much bandwidth that normal operations can't take place." "The impact of this worm was huge," agreed Ben Koshy of W3 International Media Ltd., which operates thousands of Web sites from its computers in Vancouver. "It's a very significant attack."